Wednesday

Wipe Your Feet - The Best Way To Reduce Flooring Operational Costs

When we talk about sustainable flooring and green carpet issues the conversation always seems to move towards potential LEED points, recycled content percentages or how to recycle products at the end of their useful life.  For some reason the discussion rarely starts with the operational costs of the product being evaluated and how fiscally sustainable the product is and in today's market that is a topic that needs to be addressed as a priority on every project whether a renovation or new facility. No matter what flooring material is selected for an interior space if you want to be green, eco friendly and fiscally sustainable the best way to reduce the cost is to start at the front door. Simply put, if you want to reduce your floor covering operational costs then wipe your feet.

It is a pretty simple concept and perhaps so simple that properly cleaning dirt off people's shoes before it comes into a facility is overlooked on 95 percent of all interior spaces regardless of the segment.  Now we all know that people don't stop to actually wipe their feet when they enter their office building or the local retail store but the fact remains that cleaning off shoes is where success begins.

Consider the fact that every entrance to a building is the filter to the space similar to a filter on an HVAC system so stopping dirt from entering a facility is the first priority to keeping a building clean and driving down cleaning and replacement costs. Then consider that if you have 12 - 15 feet of quality walk-off products, equivalent to at least 8-10 footfalls, you will reduce the amount of dirt into a building by 80 percent.  So why to most buildings have less than 4 feet of walk-off equivalent to 2 footfalls?  It just doesn't make fiscal sense or environmental sense because it then costs 5 times more to maintain and that mistake drives replacements up by a minimum of two times.

If owners and specifiers would increase the walk-off product to 15 feet then people would just walk into a building and actually wipe their feet without even knowing it. The interior space would look better longer, the employees would be happier, the customers would have a better experience, the operational costs would be significantly reduced and it would be a much more sustainable solution. In the future when the conversation of green carpet or sustainable flooring comes up please remember to wipe your feet.

5 comments:

  1. Remove as much of the spill as possible.
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  4. Can you let me know which one is the best between Commercial Flooring & Residential Flooring? I know Commercial Vinyl Flooring is more expensive compare then Residential Flooring.

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